Dear Good Students,
I'm trusting you to be gentle with each other, but if you want to discuss the relationships between your definitions of death and their implications for treatment, organ donation, divorce (see Pat Robertson comments in Current Events), etc. as well as how that impacts one's thinking about the beginning of life, abortion, fetal / newborn / infant organ and tissue donation, and embryonic stem-cell research, please do so here. This could be the most interesting discussion of the course. You are encouraged to use your moral imaginations, and to respond under the guidance of the intellectual virtues: Intellectual Humility, Courage, Empathy, Autonomy, Integrity, Perseverance, Confidence in Reason, & Fair-mindedness. Feel free to explore a view you don't necessarily believe, for the sake of having a devil's advocate.
If you would like to be anonymous, you can send your response to me (so I'll be able to give you credit), and I'll post for you without an identifier.
I'm looking forward to it.
When viewing the varying definitions of death, each one that can be chosen has a large impact on who is considered alive or who is considered dead. The most radical – the psychosocial view of death – calls for higher brain function as the determining factor between a living person and a corpse. This adaption on the view of death could be quite shattering to many Americans, who are have family members who are considered alive now – persons in a persistent vegetative state with lung, heart and whole brain function. Some believe that this definition could snowball and start to include others now considered fully alive, Alzheimer’s patients and the severely handicapped because they are unable to complete many higher brain functions. While this view affects those already living, studying the various definitions of death has led me to wonder about the beginnings of life and the implication of this psychosocial view on issues like abortion.
ReplyDeleteWhile some could argue that this definition is compatible with abortion, I am led to wonder differently. While an unborn child does not have a fully functioning brain until the later stages of gestation, this does not mean that its brain is defective in any way. While those in a persistent vegetative state have had the chance to live and now have a brain defect, these unborn children have never even had the chance to let their brain develop, much less been given a chance to live. DeGrazia states, ‘“When we permanently lose consciousness, we lose the possibility of any meaningful existence…We can’t think, evaluate, or choose…We can’t speak, think, feel, work, or play. We can’t befriend or love. ‘What possible meaning and value can life have under such circumstances?”’(qtd. in Barry 23). These statements do not apply to unborn babies, they cannot be considered dead because they have never had the chance to live. They have never loved, worked, or played because they were never given the chance, not because their brains were defective in some way. In my opinion, no view of death should or could ever be applied to unborn children because their bodily systems and brains are underdeveloped at the time of abortion, not damaged beyond repair. They are robbed of the chance for continued life.
I agree with what Michelle has said. The main definitions of death involve the loss of a particular function, be it the loss of heart/lung, whole brain, brainstem and higher brain function. These definitions could not therefore be used when discussing the life of an unborn child because the unborn child has not lost any of these functions; they simply have not gained them. I’m not comparing life to a pet but just because someone doesn’t have a pet, doesn’t mean they lost their pet.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both Michelle and Sadie. I do not think you can justifiably consider that quality of life when it comes to abortion. They haven't experienced the things they would "miss." They only way they are going to miss that is if they are aborted. As I mentioned in class, I agree with the biological heart lungs theory of what death is. The quality of life for someone in a vegetative states seem incalculable for me. How can we know if someone will miss feeling and working. We don't know if they have the ability to miss any of that. The same thing goes for the baby in the womb. They are alive because of what they will become is already shaped in their DNA. A person is a person no matter their capacity for brain function at a certain moment in time, but because they can't escape what is in their genes.
ReplyDeletePeople throughout history hav given up their own lives in order to preserve their babies chance to live. The question becomes is this suicide? I believe it is courage and since I am a guy and can't relate to this as well as the women of this classroom, but if someone told me that I am going to die or my baby is going to die that would be an impossible decision. I do believe we shouldn't have abortion simply for the fact that it isn't our right to decide the babies future. If someone were to make a mistake and didn't want the baby then there is always the choice of an adoption. Most abortions happen at 8-12 weeks, so I did my research and at 8 weeks they start to develop lungs, fingers, toes, and have their nerve cells are starting to branch out and connect. At 12 weeks they start to clench their fingers and toes and make sucking movements, also nerve cells are multiplying rapidly, and in the brain, synapses are forming constantly. So yes they do have brain function, but that leads to the question are they alive yet according to our decisions on when people die. I feel like they don't relate because the baby is starting to form all of these things, while a dying person is starting to lose all of these functions.
ReplyDeleteI believe that life begins at conception and I know everyone does not agree with that. Learning everything in nursing regarding human life I do believe that death can be definded as a loss of function ( ex, a loss of a heart beat, or loss of brain function). However, even though a child is not yet born, I would still consider abortion to be a death or a killing because that child still is losing their heartbeat, brain development, etc. Another example is a person who has been declared brain dead. For me, this is a little more difficult. If this was me I certainly would not want to live on the sole suppport of a ventilator and a feeding tube. I would never consider that a life. However, if this was a family member, expecially someone close to me, it would be much more difficult. When someone close to you is in that situation, you want to hold on to any last thing you have of them, even if it is just their body lying in a hospital bed. When it comes to withdrawing life support, I do not think there is a right or wrong answer because both sides are understandable.
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